


our passion on this lonely sea

by stardustlupin



Series: Hold Me Tight [5]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Keldar, Diary/Journal, Kissing, Look I don't alright? It's cute, M/M, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, POV First Person, PoV Keldar, Post-The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, trust me - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 04:00:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29895291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustlupin/pseuds/stardustlupin
Summary: With Ivar asleep at his side, Keldar lights a candle, picks up a quill, and writes:"...I don’t know why he still comes. The first time was easy enough to understand — he had heard what happened, and wanted to see the consequences of Erland’s arrogance. “I told him this would happen. I warned him.” — that’s what he said to me when he arrived, and found me shaking, alone in a field of my fallen brethren. He had already lost everything."Looking back on their relationship, Keldar must make a decision regarding a rather interesting proposition put forth by his Viper.(can be read as a standalone)
Relationships: Ivar Evil-Eye/Keldar (The Witcher)
Series: Hold Me Tight [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1998151
Comments: 5
Kudos: 24
Collections: The Faded Texts





	our passion on this lonely sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Megeara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Megeara/gifts).



He came again last night, swimming from Port Vanis because, he insists, “it’s easier.” Where and how he spends his time that swimming to ~~my~~ these ruins is _easy_ in comparison, I do not want to know.

He looks so tired. Sometimes I wonder if he only sleeps when he’s with me, on a damp mattress facing the ripped edge of a broken hall, overlooking the ocean. The ocean crashing against the rocks below — I keep telling him that one day he will dash his head on a boulder, or a fallen parapet, and that I will not go looking for him. We both know this is a lie. I will go, and I will look for him at the risk of my own demise. Perhaps it is all the push I need to end this pitiful thing I have come to call “life”; squatting in this empty graveyard. There are no ghosts here, nor wraiths. Ivar helped me burn the bodies — burn, not bury. He said it would be safer, that there was too high a risk of them turning into malevolent spectres that we’d just have to kill again. He had said “we” even then, his hand firm on my shoulder as we watched the pyres float on the water — fire floating on the water; a sight that surely, under different circumstances, had I been a younger, less tortured man, would have been beautiful.

I don’t know why he still comes. The first time was easy enough to understand — he had heard what happened, and wanted to see the consequences of Erland’s arrogance. “I told him this would happen. I warned him.” — that’s what he said to me when he arrived, and found me shaking, alone in a field of my fallen brethren. He had already lost everything. I’d heard how he went roaming, raving at all the other founders that they were turning on us — the mages, and the people we swore to protect. The word of a Viper never counted for much. Erland didn’t listen. None of them did.

I remember clearly how the warmth of his arms braced around my shoulders almost burned. I was so cold, my body already a stranger to human warmth. He wrapped his cloak around me, and held me, and let me cry into his shoulder like a child, and it burned, but minutes or hours later, I was warm, and my bones no longer clattered with the trembling of my body. I wouldn’t eat — couldn’t, surrounded as we were by death. So we gave them all a sea burial — everyone I knew tied to rafts and lit on fire. He pulled out a shiny red apple from his pack. It tasted like ash.

He doesn’t bring apples anymore, because now he _swims_. I complained once, joking, of course, about his lack of fruit, and he stole me an apple tree, and planted it near the top of my little hill. There’s always a basketful now, following me around as I do my best to preserve the tomes I guard. I’m eating one as I write. I cannot say how many I have eaten over the years (for it has been _years_ ) but I would venture that I have at least two a day. ~~I can’t eat meat anymore.~~

They remind me of him, when he’s not here. I don’t know where he goes, or why he swims back, like my own Leander. (Perhaps that is why. Perhaps he is trying to woo me by playing the part of a mythic, romantic figure. But then that would make me his Hero, and if there is one thing I am not…) He keeps trying to get me to go north with him. Something about rumours of Witchers congregating in Kaer Morhen, restoring it slowly, brick by shattered brick. I don’t know why he wants to go. As long as I have known him, he has hardly been a social man. The only reason why we ever spoke was because he was in my library. It was a little bit of petty indulgence on Erland’s part — helping his betrayer’s betrayer. Ivar knew. He didn’t care, he needed more information on the Wild Hunt (another prophecy no one believed until it was very nearly too late) and ours was the best library on the continent. I kept telling him we didn’t have what he needed; that there was no finding them, no trapping them, no hunting the Hunt, but he returned anyway, time and time again. At least once a year, he would come, and I would watch him, to make sure he treated the tomes with the required care, and put them back in their proper place, and I helped him find his way when asked.

Sometimes his visits would only last a day, other times they lasted weeks. The longer he stayed the more comfortable he became. First his swords would be carefully laid aside. Then his pauldrons and vambraces would come off, then his knee guards; so on and so forth until I would find him standing by the hearth late at night, reading in the firelight with his shirt off. He seemed to glow in the orange waves; fawn skin taking on an amber glow, littered with pale, white scars. I found myself trying to match each on to their likely origin; a wyvern’s tooth, a griffin’s talon. I found myself checking for new ones whenever the opportunity arose.

One day he saw me watching, a quizzical eyebrow hooked in my direction. I never told him this, but in such lighting I understood why they called his eye “evil”. Feeling uncommonly brave, I walk to stand in front of him. His jet black hair was sticking up at odd angles from where he kept running his hand through it. It looked soft, and I wanted to touch it, and no small part of me found that notion terrifying. So instead I prodded a round scar under his ribs that looked to be from a gouge, barely larger than my fingertip when at first it was the size of my fist. “What was that?” I asked, without looking away from his eyes. “A basilisk,” he said. He had such a kind face; his cheekbones high and regal, his good eye soft, smooth arcs like the back of a whale coming up for air. Reading in such low light, only a thin sliver of iris remained.

On and on I went, touching his scars perhaps, I am ashamed to admit, less delicately than I should have, and he answered each time, until my finger wandered to his lips; a fine shade of pink, the upper just a little more plush than the lower, and a perfect bow. I still remember the whisper of his breath against my skin, somehow so much warmer than the fire. He kissed me, and I left. The next night, I picked up his hand without saying a word, and in a graceless moment I pressed my lips to the centre of his palm. The night following, I kissed the corner of his lips.

On and on we went; Ivar seemed more than content to follow where I led, never pushing, or asking for more, just taking what he could with a ravenous hunger that I still cannot believe is directed at me. Even earlier tonight; I could not tell you for how long we kissed. He held himself up over me, my hands around his neck, one of his holding my waist, lips traversing from lips, to noses, to eyelids, to jaws and down necks, and back again. “Come with me,” he said, his voice like a low tide, his lips brushing my hairline. All these years and he was asking me to follow _him_ for once. It’s all he’s ever asked of me and yet still, I hesitate. There are all these books, so much I have fought to protect for decades since the Fall. If I leave them now, then what were they all for? But he promises that there are young Vipers left to help carry them, and there is Coën and his friends, and a wayward mage named Destiny who is willing to provide portals for some reason or other and Ivar knows I know that Vesemir would be more than happy to have me back. Happier to have my books, and help with his refurbished library.

I will go with him, I think, though I still do not know why he desires it. How could I say no to this man, laying down beside me, with his skin shining in the moonlight? This man who comes back to keep me company time and time again? After all he’s been through, he deserves more than a damp mattress on the jagged edge of some ruins, and a lover who stops stroking his hair to ramble by candlelight. I will go with him. I will tell him so in the morning, but for now the moon still hangs high above us, and Ivar stirs at my side, searching for me. So I must lay down my quill and my head, and play with his silky black hair while he noses at my neck, lulling him into a deeper sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> title taken form "Hero and Leander" by Adam Guettel because my mind latched onto the metaphor: Hero and Leander from enemy states, Hero with her long, golden hair, Leander swimming to her sea-side castle.
> 
> As always, kudos and comments are deeply appreciated ♥︎


End file.
